Hi Ben, I have the same problem 
Hope you will PM me too
Ok Ok, April and KEFâs âRoon Readyâ isnât here yet. But my personal Solution for âRoon Readyâ -after a lot of testing- is, and Iâm proudly presenting it here:
Ingredients:
- Deskmini 310 with 8core i7-9700 32GB RAM, 500GB M.2, 2x2TB HD
- running macOS Big Sur with Roon 1.8 Server and
- HQPlayer 4.x upsampling everything to DSD or PCM768
- RaspBerry Pi 4 as NAA (DietPi, RoonBridge & HQP NAA) feeding:
- S.M.S.L M500 ESS Sabre DAC - 512DSD or 768 PCM via USB
- M500 AUX-out to AUX-in of KEF LS50 Wireless II
- Controller: Mac mini M1 - iPhone 12 Pro Max - iPad mini - iPad Pro 11
Not exactly cheap nor Plug and Play like the LS50 should be, but the Sound of this Setup is WOW, I may stay with this setting and only switch for convenience listening via Airplay or TV-HDMI, everything else from ROON with Qobuz (gave up on TIDAL) will go over the above chain for best in class listening. Also great for Headphone-only Listening with the M500 DAC!
So, no Solution for everyone but Iâm Happy with it for now.
That kind of defeats the simplicity of going with the LS50W2 in the first place. Iâd rather just wait a couple weeks than jump thru hoops with many unneeded extra boxes.
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Exactly my thought. I changed over to the KEF LS50W2âs to stop my constant urge for trying different configurations. April is the month of moment of truth.
As long as youâre happy.
Yeah, I donât get it at all. Is chromecast really that bad???
The Raspberry Pi 4 has two micro HDMI outputs, and the KEF LS Wireless 2 also has HDMI. According to the Rasberry Pi documentation, you can select HDMI for the audio output. But I canât see a specification for the quality. (e.g. eARC-compatible HDMI ports can deliver 24bit/192kHz.)
Have you tried connecting directly from the Pi4 to the LS50W II?
I looked into it with Ropieee and it doesnât allow the hdmi port on the rpi4 to be used. Not sure if another OS allows it though. But also then MQA isnât unfolded, that only works with a networked input.
The Piâs onboard audio (mini jack and HDMI) still uses PWM. Itâs not just not very good â itâs bad. Pretty bad. That â and the HDMI port on the LS50WII is designed for an (e)ARC connection to a television â it does not accept regular audio.
Chromecast is fine. But not gapless. And of course it does not play nice with other RAAT zones.
Ok thanks for the update. From what you and Rene have said, HDMI isnât a solution from the RPi 4! Just have to hope that KEF/Roon come up with the goods some time in April!
Iâm sure they will.
I was about to make an Aprils fool joke saying the new firmware was out ⊠but I decided to behave ⊠Guess Iâm becoming mature âŠ
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Funny enough, it was the first thing in the morning: to check is the update is already available. Unfortunately it is notâŠ
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just joked about this on twitter.
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From today any moment, this month. Itâs like Christmas.
Haha! Wild guess: Internal Goal at KEF for the upDate may be late March, they missed this internal goal and now fall back to what they communicated to customers âAprilâ. Now there are a bunch of developers with sleepless nights at KEF or who else develops the Firmware for our beloved Wireless II.
Hope they donât forget to overhaul the app, itâs slow as molasses with Qobuz and with TIDAL, Radio and Podcast is nearly unusable bc of this slowness. So, imho, the app has still way to go to become the center of using the new KEFs, no iPad app either.
But who needs this all if itâs Roon Ready? I use the app exclusively to switch inputs and for turning volume up and down.
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I want multi-room
I have negotiated a return authorization from my vendor. I will give KEF one more week to roll out Roon. 6 months is not âComing Soonâ. I lucked out that the vendor will take them back as they are well beyond the normal return period.
To be honest I miss my separates which, although a lot more expensive, also sounded a lot better. I do think that KEFs offer a lot of bang-for-the-buck but to my ears they are not really giant killers. They might however sound better than some complete systems @ $3500(includes the KEF stands). For me they were fine for casual listening and really good for TV.
YMMVâŠ